Nine Diagnostics and Orbits Oncology have entered into an exploratory partnership to jointly develop an integrated precision oncology diagnostics platform. The collaboration brings together two distinct but complementary approaches to predicting and monitoring cancer treatment response: Nine Diagnostics’ blood-based multi-omic molecular fingerprinting technology and Orbits Oncology’s AI-enabled organoid analysis platform.
Orbits Oncology, led by CEO and co-founder Abraham Lin, PhD, is building a platform that predicts which cancer therapies are most likely to work for each patient before treatment begins. Using a sample of the patient’s own tumor, the company grows patient-derived organoid models in the lab and exposes them to approved therapy options, using AI-powered computer vision to measure how each tumor responds. The OrBITS platform (Organoid Brightfield Identification-based Therapy Screening) enables label-free, time-lapse analysis at single-clone resolution, capturing tumor heterogeneity in a way that traditional single-timepoint assays cannot.
Nine Diagnostics’ AI-enabled multi-omic nanosensor platform takes a complementary systemic view. Rather than measuring tumor response directly from excised tissue, the platform captures proteomic, metabolomic, and lipidomic signals from blood alongside patient clinical context, and applies machine learning to identify disease-relevant molecular patterns without requiring prior knowledge of which biomarkers matter. Together, the two platforms offer a more complete picture of disease state and treatment efficacy: systemic molecular fingerprinting from blood linked to functional tumor response from tissue.
The exploratory partnership establishes a framework for feasibility work across several areas: integrated workflow development, early multimodal dataset generation, and validation planning in oncology indications including renal cell carcinoma and lung cancer. The objective is to generate the first combined datasets linking systemic molecular fingerprints with functional organoid-based drug response. This combination has not previously been demonstrated and could open a new category of precision diagnostic evidence for both clinical decision support and biopharma drug development applications.
The collaboration also reflects a shared ecosystem connection. Both Nine Diagnostics and Orbits Oncology participated in the Merck Digital Sciences Studio, a digital accelerator focused on enabling next-generation technologies for drug discovery and development. That shared foundation reinforces the convergence of AI-driven diagnostics, multi-omic measurement, and functional tumor biology as an emerging and strategically significant area of precision oncology.
For Nine Diagnostics, the partnership extends the platform’s capabilities into functional validation and creates an opportunity to demonstrate predictive value across both blood-based and tissue-based dimensions. For the broader oncology field, this type of multimodal integration represents an important step toward more comprehensive, patient-specific treatment decision support.
About Nine Diagnostics
Nine Diagnostics is an AI-enabled multi-omic nanosensor company advancing precision medicine. The platform simultaneously captures proteomic, metabolomic, and lipidomic signals alongside patient clinical context to generate a multi-omic fingerprint, using machine learning to identify disease-relevant patterns without requiring prior knowledge of which biomarkers matter. This enables pre-treatment patient stratification, on-treatment response monitoring, and post-treatment minimal residual disease detection. Founded by Freddy T. Nguyen, MD, PhD (CEO), Daniel A. Heller, PhD (CSO), and Mijin Kim, PhD (Scientific Advisor), Nine Diagnostics is based in Cambridge, Massachusetts.